Grandfather clause

Grandfather clause, statutory or constitutional device enacted by seven Southern states between 1895 and 1910 to deny suffrage to African Americans. It provided that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements for voting. Because the former slaves had not been granted the franchise until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, those clauses worked effectively to exclude black people from the vote but assured the franchise to many impoverished and illiterate whites.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1915 that the grandfather clause was unconstitutional because it violated equal voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, it was not until Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Congress was able to put an end to the discriminatory practice. The act abolished voter prerequisites and also allowed for federal supervision of voter registration. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Fifteenth Amendment was finally enforceable.

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amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States that guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The amendment complemented and followed in the wake of the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth...

final court of appeal and final expositor of the Constitution of the United States. Within the framework of litigation, the Supreme Court marks the boundaries of authority between state and nation, state and state, and government and citizen.

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provision formerly included in constitutions of several U.S. Southern states that excuses from other suffrage tests those who have served in any war and their descendants and those who were voters before Jan. 1, 1867, and their descendants; adopted as means of restricting suffrage to white voters; declared unconstitutional 1915